215 Moore Street; All renderings credit of View Point Studios via HWKN Architecture
Northern Brooklyn job growth increased by as much as 42 percent from 2010 to 2106, yet office construction had hardly kept pace. Developer Heritage Equity Partners seems eager to change that: Hot on the heels of 25 Kent, the borough’s first ground up office space in decades, it announced plans for the Bushwick Generator, a new commercial space at 215 Moore Street in the heart of Bushwick.
Renderings of a design by HWKN Architecture show a three-story base with an eye-catching vertical icon on top. No two floor plates within would be exactly alike, and over 375,000 square feet of office space would be targeted at entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies alike. The development would also contain approximately 16,000 square feet of retail space and approximately 80,000 square feet of expo space. Between 249 planned parking spaces, a nearby Citi Bike station, and its close proximity to the Morgan Avenue L train, a line that just resumed regular service, there is no shortage of ways to get there.
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Under normal circumstances, the plans for the Bushwick Generator would be regarded as further proof of Brooklyn’s ascent. But according to Crain’s New York Business, New York’s tech companies will need a break on rent to survive the economic fallout of the pandemic. In such an environment, it is unlikely that the scrappy start-ups the Bushwick Generator hoped to attract would be able to set up shop in a building like this.
At the same time, Heritage Equity Partners described the space as one “transforming the office paradigm to accommodate the changing way we interact with our workspace.” While it is too soon to say when most New Yorkers will physically go back to work, we can be certain that the work environment we return to will be different from the one we left behind. A CNBC report foresees extra space, better air filtration and sanitation practices, and greater flexibility to work from home among the changes. Indeed, the Bushwick Generator could still be at the forefront of the office environment’s transformation, if not in the way its developer predicted.
It may take some time before we find out. In early reports, the Bushwick Generator’s completion was projected for 2023 at the latest. However, that estimate came in before all non-essential construction in New York, which includes this project, was shut down to contain the pandemic.
Interior rendering via Heritage Equity Partners
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